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Monday, 20 August 2012

IMFW: Harvey Cushing

This week's IMFW is really more like an IMPW - an Interesting Medical Person of the Week. Harvey Williams Cushing is often regarded as the "father of modern neurosurgery".

An American descended from a long line of doctors, he was born in Ohio in 1869. After studying medicine, he went on to study surgery at the famous Johns Hopkins Hospital just after it had opened, then spent time in Europe before returning to Johns Hopkins as an associate professor in surgery. As well as writing about medicine, he was a talented medical illustrator and several of his drawings were published in textbooks - and as if that wasn't enough, he received the Pulitzer Prize for Biography for his biography of his mentor, William Osler.

Cushing's first monograph was on the subject of the pituitary, and on this blog, you'll have heard Cushing's name from one of his most famous discoveries, the disease named after him - Cushing's Disease; a tumour of the pituitary gland which secretes ACTH (adrenocorticotrophic hormone) and causes a range of symptoms including weight gain, bruising, sweating, high blood pressure and diabetes. Being a modest chap, he had originally named it "polyglandular syndrome", but his name stuck. However, this was far from his only contribution to medicine:

- He developed medical instruments which are still in use today, including the Cushing Forcep which is used during cranial surgery, the Cushing clip - a small clip for blood vessels to stop bleeding during surgery, which dramatically decreased mortality rates - and the use of electrocautery which he developed with W.T. Bovie, a physicist

- Along with a colleague, Ernest Codman, Cushing devised the first anaesthetic chart to help surgeons and anaesthetists monitor pulse, temperature and breathing - an innovation which was widely adoped

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About Me

I am a 23-year old girl who was diagnosed with a TSHoma (pituitary adenoma secreting thyroid-stimulating hormone, also known as a thyrotropinoma) in December 2010. This excitingly rare brain tumour appears to have been the culmination of all my childhood attempts to be "special".

As well as neoplasia, my cells enjoy mitosis, catabolism, and badminton.